Consilience

Such an amazing share! Thank you for posting this. ❤️

I would just say the awake dick measuring contest is more mental garbage you need to work through if you’re actually interested in Awakening, which it’s clear you’re not. Of course the Buddha is imaginary, all of life of a dream. Your point? The real fruit is so radical you will not cling to or incessantly seek peak experiences.

The most important rule with this type of sitting and sitting in meditation in general: Do not harm the physical body. If you have injuries, seated practice will look very different for you than others. Sitting for long periods can also be undulated with chairs, standing, or lying down in a position where you won't fall asleep. But yes, as important as these other areas of life are, meditation practice will serve to bring more harmony and happiness to all of it. Following this instinct is the most important move you'll ever make in life, in my view.

@Breakingthewall Yeah... Jesus on the cross is definitely a symbol that comes to mind as one encounters this collective amalgam of suffering. I'm very glad the post resonated.

@Shambhu Thank you so much brother You are certainly not most people either. The depth of your practice comes across in your posts and they're always a joy reading. Psychedelics are a poor substitute indeed, but their allure makes perfect sense from my pov. Expecting most people to do the amount of work I've done or even you've done seems like it would be an unreasonable expectation? I'm not sure what is reasonable to expect, honestly. I'm still floored by how deep meditation goes and continually humbled at how much work left there is to do. Unfortunately, most don't make it to the point where enough momentum is built to see the staggering results that are possible. Even more unfortunately, most people don't understand that the results with meditation start to unfold non-linearly. For most seekers, psychedelics will be a more powerful experience than practice. But once practice starts to rival psychedelics... ?--> ❤️ Anyways, thank you again! I am so appreciative of your support.

Thank you fam. Hopefully it resonates. It's paradoxical because yes, wholeness, complete happiness is a quality of this moment, but this happiness doesn't exclude the horrors of the world, nor the grieving of such horrors. The happiness of awakening is independent of perceptual conditions. This is radical. This claim is absolutely radical. It means that the grieving, pain, and even suffering, when held in the view of Awakening, is happiness. Your description of the world seems more in line with an Arahant's view, whereas mine is more in line with a Bodhisattva's. My personal awakening means very little to me if it's not helping to bring harmony to other beings. To treat the world as an insubstantial illusion, while a perfectly accurate view, feels too contracted and self oriented. Best of luck to your journey as well friend.

The changing of one's mental habits is a by-product of the real fruit - clearly seeing into the nature of reality. The process of purification is not done to change or transform the self. This would actually add to the sense of self. Purification when held with "right view" is used to uproot the mental activity preventing one from insight, consciousness and God-realization. The claim has been made that you've had deeper awakenings than the Buddha and that meditation is a waste of time if one is interested in awakening. This post would imply this is not the case.

Forum won't let me edit post, made a typo with the schedule. Lunch time needs to be labeled with "pm" and evening times are labeled as "am", but should be labeled with "pm".

This is one of many forms of “swarm warfare” that could rapidly escalate to nuclear war. Wasn’t expecting this to spread from the inside out though. While this may seem like a positive, given the complexity of what is happening and how aggressively Russia’s social and financial infrastructure is collapsing, we’re in a very dangerous situation.

@RickyFitts @nistake Thank you both ?? ❤️ @RickyFitts That’s amazing! Had no idea you practiced at that intensity. Yes… ironically, the more I let go of state chasing, the more radical states can become. But what you said it crucial, the essence of meditation is not about manufacturing mystical experiences, but recognizing what is being sought is already present. The paradox though is that without deliberate practice, the possibility of self deception is huge.

Im at a point in my practice where meditating can feel like 50 - 70ug of LSD and that’s just.. normal. Wild, outlandish meditative experiences just happen, regularly now. Less in a perceptual intensity but in the awareness of direct consciousness; this consciousness is extremely palpable, obvious, self illuminating, self liberating, and effortless and continues to increase in intensity as I keep up the rigor of practice. There’s a spaciousness and emptiness to experience that I walk around with. The idea of life being a dream is not a philosophical concept but an experiential observation and embodiment. Solipsism is a joke compared to Absolute Unity, and interdependency. The sense of self is fluid, expansive, contractive, I can detect people’s emotions much more easily. Because Ive also been doing a large amount of strong determination sitting, my relationship with pain is radically transforming. Basically pain tolerance is much much higher than it was even 3 months ago. Craving for junk food, porn, masturbation is at an all time low. Very high amounts of emotional ease, happiness, peace. Im more honest with others and how I communicate. I literally just dont feel bored now. At this point Ive accessed deeper “states” of “God” meditating than many of my earlier psychedelic trips. When I see Leo shitting on meditation I find it both hysterical and sad because he’s leading so many people away from the path that actually Awakens us. Using 5MeO for the rest of your life just isnt it, and observing Leo’s lack of embodiment and shadow come out on the forum and in videos makes this increasingly clear. It‘s blind leading the blind, yet because of his success with Actualized many assume he must know what he’s talking about when it comes to spirituality. In many ways he does, in many ways he’s utterly and completely deluded, like with how meditation works and how to achieve crazy results with it. He’s cornered himself into such determined arrogance, that Im not confident he’ll ever snap out of the self-deception. Anyways, the thing about this intensity of practice is that it’s become extremely pleasurable not in an overt perceptual sense, but in the radical recontextualization of basically all facets of life. I see the relationship between how much Im suffering in the background of life, and how by purifying the conditions of this suffering, Im also coming into deeper union with truth. And this authentic (re: watch out for neo advaita bullshit) union with truth that transcends all states is the path of Buddha’s, and is the path the self most deeply desires. Im realizing how precious and rare it is to actually be on the path pursuing it at full force and feel immense gratitude that reality somehow manifested the conditions for me to be legitimately on it.

Lmao. Where did Leo say this? For the past 1.5 months Ive been meditating 3 hours per day, can confirm it is not horseshit, at all. It’s… absurdly powerful to say the least.

Relative, relational knowledge is a function of cognition (mind), cognition (mind) is a function of consciousness. Knowing of actuality is the most authentic, trustworthy knowledge as it leaves 0 room for epistemological debate. Relative, relation knowledge, by virtue of its building blocks on a multitude of ontological scales, is never fully true or false, and therefore cannot be absolutely true.

So much to unpack here, my guess is it would takes most beings lifetimes to understand.

Rigorous meditation.

Well it may be a little late, but today and tomorrow I would increase your daily sitting to around 4 hours per day as a means of building momentum before the formal day 1. Unless you’re looking for the whip lash of not as intense practice to extremely intense practice. Id also recommend letting go of all expectations of how the retreat is supposed to go or feel. It’s common for people to be blissed out, go through excruciating difficulty, total neutrality, or some combination of those three. Remember, (and this is a HUGE insight I would guess the majority of meditators don’t understand about meditation) what is happening in one’s experience or mind at the surface, what is clear and recognizable moment to moment, is not always indicative of what is happening in the depths of mind and consciousness. Imagine the surface of the Earth before an earthquake - many shifts in tectonic plates are taking place underneath the ground, the overwhelming majority of which cannot be felt or perceived. All it takes is one tiny shift in the tectonic plates and suddenly a massive earthquake erupts. Likewise, deep transformations and “progress” can be made with meditation despite the fact that no surface level or gross manifestations of mind are changing. Many people give up on meditation before these profound earthquake moments can happen. It’s best to keep practicing despite what is happening at the surface level of mind and emotion. In my opinion, it’s best to not take seriously our surface level emotions and thoughts. The deeper, more intuitive clarity and wisdom as a result of the retreat will emerge on its own and be self-validating. Yet in order for that clarity/wisdom to arise, we need to let go and surrender to the practice, retreat structure, and all attempts at manipulation. Let the pain, fatigue, boredom, and doubt filter through you without resistance, thereby purifying the mind rather than creating suffering. Last thing, sign up for your next retreat immediately after you finish. To get the most out of serious meditation practice, annual retreats are the minimum. Have fun!

I've done enough strong determination sitting and had enough results with the practice to see where it leads long term, and under extreme training. I believe it is entirely possible for the human mind to uproot the aversion to pain, but the amount of practice required to achieve this is so incomprehensible, I'm not confident one could do it in a single lifetime unless they completely devoted themselves to the path of liberation.

Meditation and purifying the mind to be totally at midst with discomfort and pain through things like waking up early, rigorous exercise, strong determination sitting, cold showers, eating healthy, doing the work, walking the path. You'll find your body/mind naturally starts doing the things it most authentically values when it can have equanimity with discomfort.

More popular. The need for a massive, collective growth in the qualities of wisdom and compassion are rapidly growing. Humanity is walking off a cliff and taking the entire planet with it; run away climate change may very well be an inevitability at this point. The only glimmer of hope humanity has is if we become wiser and more compassionate, which is essentially the byproduct of spirituality done correctly. Through a combination of widespread psychedelic usage and mass adoption of contemplative practice, there is still hope. However, if we just keep repeating these collective cycles of destructive behavior, yeah it’s only a matter of time before a very painful shift happens. Again, a shift that doesn't just threaten humanity but all life on Earth, more than it already is.

This. So much this. I would add that in addition to not using an effective strategy, as you seem to indicate with "low quality nonsense, these people are also vastly underestimating how much meditation is needed to see serious results, are never going on retreats, are basically thinking 30 - 60 minutes per day will get them somewhere. And while it will to some extent, the profound, life shattering results meditation is capable of providing typically need something along the lines of 2+ hours per day plus frequent retreat training. If one is serious about liberation, 2+ hours per day is very easy to find time for. Of course, most people are terrified of actually getting their hands dirty and doing the work and would prefer spiritually bypassing/spiritually bullshitting themselves, hence the explosion in popularity of the Neo Advaita like messaging.

“Samaneri Jayasara - Wisdom of the Masters”on YouTube

That obviousness can be extremely shallow, or extremely clear. And even still, this clear seeing doesn’t reveal “what am I?”

Are you speaking from belief or direct experience? How can you trust your answer either way?

And yet only a fool doesn’t pass through, walk, begin, or end.

I would say this is possible, and equally and perhaps more possible for Jim Newman and Tony Parsons followers. How enticing would it be to jump to the end of the path? To feel accomplished, like I finally got it! Rather than the honest and at times painful admittance that I don’t know. The ego hates not knowing. It seeks answers, security, assurance, invulnerability, all of which Neo Advaita provide to its followers. In my own experience, it’s not that “so many years of seeking and practice must count for something.” It’s more like I am continually and utterly humbled by the depth of this path, work, what is possible, and simultaneously how much “Ive done” and how much further there is to go. It would be like a casual gym goer telling a professional bodybuilder yeah lifting weights may help some with growing muscle, but it’s all about nutrition anyways. How does the bodybuilder respond?